UK-based smart med-tech innovator, NeedleSmart, claims to have designed ‘the world’s first end-to-end vaccination and safe needle destruction system’.
The aim is to reduce the 100,000 annual needlestick injuries (NSIs) to UK NHS workers each year, and three million suffered globally. A recent survey by SERMO (the Social Network Platform for Physicians) on the importance of surgical gloves, responded to by 510 practicing UK, US, German, Swedish, Japanese, and Australian surgeons, revealed that, based on the responses, 94 per cent of such personnel in the UK have either been personally affected by a needlestick injury (NSI), or have seen a colleague experience one. The Royal College Of Nursing reported last year that the pressures of the pandemic, and a lack of training, accounted for a 50% rise in sharps injuries.
To address the issue, Knowsley-based ‘med-tech disruptor’ NeedleSmart, has entered into a new ‘innovation partnership’ with Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, one of Europe’s leading paediatric healthcare institutions, which has its own dedicated Innovation Centre ‘focused on solving real-world problems faced day to day’. The partnership’s first phase will focus on a safety and needlestick injuries (NSI) reduction programme ‘as part of its clinician and patient safety enhancement’. The project aims to ‘impact, reduce, and eventually prevent’, the 100,000 NSIs that occur annually to NHS healthcare staff.
In its wider remit, NeedleSmart is working with 15 NHS UK Trusts as part of the nationwide pilot, where its focus is shared between safety enhancement, carbon reduction, and sustainability. It says the programme is ‘breaking new ground on the art of the possible with regards to medical waste disposal’, resulting is direct carbon savings.
Alder Hey, widely recognised for its co-creation and adoption of new innovative technologies, boasts the UK’s largest hospital-based Innovation Centre, with 25+ full- time ‘innovation experts’ working out of a 1000 m2 Innovation Hub at the hospital’s heart. Through this alliance, Alder Hey will work directly with NeedleSmart as it brings its multi-faceted hardware and software solutions to the healthcare markets.
As part of the project, NeedleSmart, working in conjunction with British engineering solutions company, CAL International, has designed and innovated a patented needle destruction system. This not only destroys the hypodermic needle, but also provides a full audit trail of each needle, from its initial deployment, through to its assignment to healthcare staff, injection to patient, and safe destruction.
The NeedleSmart Pro device destroys the contaminated needle in a sealed chamber in just six seconds, effectively minimising post-procedural NSI. The device heats the needles inserted to 1,300 °C, killing potential harmful pathogens, viruses, and bacteria adhering to the needle. ‘Within seconds’ the needle is then compressed into a tiny ball and released from the device ‘as a safe sphere of metal at the tip of the syringe’.
NeedleSmart has recently achieved FDA approval as a Class II medical device, making it the first UK company to achieve FDA 510(k) approval (Class II for Sharps Needle Destruction Device (NDD), and in turn allowing it to expand into the US market and other global territories.
Commenting on the new partnership with Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, NeedleSmart CEO, Cliff Kirby, said: “We are delighted to be working with the Trust on this unique innovation partnership. There is a massive issue for the NHS around the safety of healthcare staff. The wider implications of NSI include the costs of medical treatment for the injured healthcare worker, and of substitute staff and costly litigation, all while the NHS is under immense pressure dealing with the pandemic.”
Claire Liddy, managing director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, added: “At Alder Hey, we want to ensure we are always standing at the leading edge of clinical innovation and safety. NeedleSmart’s product solution offers a number of innovation drivers to build from – starting with clinician and patient safety around the major issue of needlestick injuries, carbon reduction, and data transactions. Working alongside the team at NeedleSmart, we are constantly challenging conventional thinking around sharps disposal, and what benefits could be achieved at that moment.
“We build areas of technical strength and excellence, and scan the horizon for cutting-edge technology that can positively impact healthcare, working with a select number of partners that share our drive and vision – NeedleSmart being one such business. We have been assessing the viability of NeedleSmart in the background during our first COVID-19 vaccination programme – and are delighted to be working with NeedleSmart to reduce the occurrence and impact of needlestick injuries across the NHS.”